It's that simple! There is no need to crack heads open to solve this problem, its right here, everybody wins!
Hoarding itself is not the problem according to them - it's just the side effect. The issue is players not using consumables, which is why they're changing them into infinite... "consumables." Their idea is to encourage people to use everything they have at their disposal, make them experiment more instead of ignoring consumable items.
Well, mostly because, generally speaking, the idea of a very limited BUT rechargeable resource (and this is a key point, it isn't "infinite potions" but "finite and rechargeable") is clever game design.
It both encourages the player to use everything he has while preventing the risk of the player just gathering too much and cheapening the challenge.
As already pointed it worked very well in Dark Souls with the Estus Flask system.
Now, the complaint here it seems to revolve mostly around not fitting the lore and not being particularly realistic.
Both complaints I can agree with, by the wya, even if personally I don't value them too much.
You create the potions once, after that those potions are always refilled for free when you meditate.
It worked in Dark Souls because the areas were all fairly linear and Estus Flasks could only be recharged at specific points in the game.
Allowing the player to meditate anywhere, thus refilling their potions, is far cheaper than simply gathering a lot of ingredients (which takes time and inventory space).
Essentially, according to what we know so far, potions aren't items you create and pile in your inventory anymore.
They now are unique items you can create just once (and then eventually upgrade few times).
From this point on, you are supposed to use them in a limited fashion (i.e. just once, maybe more if upgraded, but that's not clear yet) and you have to meditate to change the active potions/refill the used ones.
On a side note, I'm still not sure how meditation is supposed to work (see @Broghain post just above).
Are we going to have fixed usable firecamp? Will you be able to rest at will but there will be areas where you can't?
Not sure if we have any official statement on the topic.
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Oh Konrad, why did you have this stupid idea 
? And worse yet, why did you actually pursue it instead of forgetting about ever having it as quickly as possible? This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever! What, does Geralt just filter the ingredients for those potions out of the air? How the fuck did the other devs not immediately try to stone Konrad when he came to them with that awful proposal?
? And worse yet, why did you actually pursue it instead of forgetting about ever having it as quickly as possible? This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever! What, does Geralt just filter the ingredients for those potions out of the air? How the fuck did the other devs not immediately try to stone Konrad when he came to them with that awful proposal?But at the same time you are "cheapening" the whole thing because the potions are available the WHOLE TIME, whenever you want.
There is no preparation (collecting ingredients, brewing the ones you needed), you ALWAYS HAVE THEM IN YOUR INVENTORY when having meditated (which is btw. incredibly annoying to have something refilled in my inventory when I only did it once and do not WANT to use it anymore because I don't like the potion and it takes up inventory space (and yes, there were also such potions in TW2), I mean come on).
Look, I tell you how I sometimes did it:
I am in the game, I took several quests, am about to go out and fight some monsters. I start meditating. Most of the time you have enough monster-parts anyway to create most potions if you are an active player and do side missions. I start brewing my potions, make staples of a specific one (5 or 6) while ignoring other ones (which I do not like to use). I begin to think "Do I need cat? Nah, no dark areas around and no caves there, but lets make 1 just in case", make this potions, make that one. Okay, let's go. First monster encounter. Kick their asses. Meditating, taking swallow. Going on, picking up herbs and killing monsters along the way (new ingredients already collected that way). Going on... okay, coming close to an area with lots of monsters, it might get rough (probably not, but hey, this is a role-playing game, so I'm in the role: I'm Geralt and if I don't want to die I better be prepared. Meditating, taking potions. Let's get the fun started.
It is PART of my experience, part of my role-play. And I just can't say how incredibly I will miss that. That's just how I feel.
Hoarding is a tactical play. If you hoard and don't use you are stupid, sorry. And if people don't use their potions it's probably because the monsters are not enough of a challenge to require potions. Solution? Make monsters harder....
And to be honest, I can not understand people telling me getting ingredients is a chore, actually they just fall into your bag as you kill monsters and walk in the world since there is normally about 20 times the material you need to make your potions.
Would be even worse if we could only meditate at fires.....
Because basically (in the worst case) you would then have 1 potion of each type and could only camp at fireplaces, making the "planning phase" very un-dynamic in such a big world
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To clarify my vote: I like that we will be able to decide when the potion will kick in (hey, maybe the mutations give witchers an organ where potions are stored until they want them released) but this other thing, the auto-refill sounds absolutely horrible. I just hope we can make enough noise in time for them to still change this!
Well we have 27 "YES" to 111 "NO"....
It really shows the mentality here on the forums...
Wasn't this changed? Now you have mutagens that last until cancelled by the player at the next meditation and you have potions that are drinkable in combat. That activation system is not in place as far as I'm aware.
As demut said, it doesn't necessarily mean it will get changed. Look at the crossbow poll, the people that don't want it are in the lead for a while now, but it seems the crossbow is here to stay.
Well i don't agree with our premises, so it's really hard for me to agree with your conclusions.
I *genuinely* don't think that a system with limited, interchangeable and mutually exclusive buffs equals to "having everything all the times", especially since you are still supposed to pre-select them out of battles and be ready when the time comes.
I also don't think that this system equals to "no need to gather any more". if anything, and i already argued this few times in this very thread, I would hope that if they are clever enough they could take the chance to make each single reagent more rare, unique and interesting to gather, being more or less "one time" items.
Just to not be too vague let's put this in a real game example: instead of gathering two hundred flowers of the same type, you could have no more than a dozen rare spots where you can actually find that plant, maybe even defended by some big ass monster or tied to a side quest.
On top of that, I doubt those potions are supposed to take inventory slots with this system; they are most likely something that pops up just on the alchemy/meditation screen.
I agree with your second statement, not really with the first one.
Of course, this is a system that implicitly requires limitations to how much you can meditate/rest. On the other hand I really don't think linearity or non-linearity have much of an influence on this system.
Not to mention I wouldn't really describe Dark Souls as a linear environment, if not in terms of isolated segments (which, by the way, I would expect to be more or less linear in TW3 as well, see: places like dungeons and ruins).